Headlong Hall, by Thomas Love Peacock

Chapter XV

The Conclusion

The squire and his select party of philosophers and dilettanti were again left in peaceful
possession of Headlong Hall: and, as the former made a point of never losing a moment in the accomplishment of a
favourite object, he did not suffer many days to elapse, before the spiritual metamorphosis of eight into four was
effected by the clerical dexterity of the Reverend Doctor Gaster.

Immediately after the ceremony, the whole party dispersed, the squire having first extracted from every one of his
chosen guests a positive promise to re-assemble in August, when they would be better enabled, in its most appropriate
season, to form a correct judgment of Cambrian hospitality.

Mr Jenkison shook hands at parting with his two brother philosophers. “According to your respective systems,” said
he, “I ought to congratulate you on a change for the better, which I do most cordially: and to condole with
you on a change for the worse, though, when I consider whom you have chosen, I should violate every principle
of probability in doing so.”

“You will do well,” said Mr Foster, “to follow our example. The extensive circle of general philanthropy, which, in
the present advanced stage of human nature, comprehends in its circumference the destinies of the whole species,
originated, and still proceeds, from that narrower circle of domestic affection, which first set limits to the empire
of selfishness, and, by purifying the passions and enlarging the affections of mankind, has given to the views of
benevolence an increasing and illimitable expansion, which will finally diffuse happiness and peace over the whole
surface of the world.”

“The affection,” said Mr Escot, “of two congenial spirits, united not by legal bondage and superstitious imposture,
but by mutual confidence and reciprocal virtues, is the only counterbalancing consolation in this scene of mischief and
misery. But how rarely is this the case according to the present system of marriage! So far from being a central point
of expansion to the great circle of universal benevolence, it serves only to concentrate the feelings of natural
sympathy in the reflected selfishness of family interest, and to substitute for the humani nihil alienum puto of youthful philanthropy, the charity begins at home of maturer
years. And what accession of individual happiness is acquired by this oblivion of the general good? Luxury, despotism,
and avarice have so seized and entangled nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of the human race, that the
matrimonial compact, which ought to be the most easy, the most free, and the most simple of all engagements, is become
the most slavish and complicated — a mere question of finance — a system of bargain, and barter, and commerce, and
trick, and chicanery, and dissimulation, and fraud. Is there one instance in ten thousand, in which the buds of first
affection are not most cruelly and hopelessly blasted, by avarice, or ambition, or arbitrary power? Females, condemned
during the whole flower of their youth to a worse than monastic celibacy, irrevocably debarred from the hope to which
their first affections pointed, will, at a certain period of life, as the natural delicacy of taste and feeling is
gradually worn away by the attrition of society, become willing to take up with any coxcomb or scoundrel, whom that
merciless and mercenary gang of cold-blooded slaves and assassins, called, in the ordinary prostitution of language
friends, may agree in designating as a prudent choice. Young men, on the other hand, are driven by
the same vile superstitions from the company of the most amiable and modest of the opposite sex, to that of those
miserable victims and outcasts of a world which dares to call itself virtuous, whom that very society whose pernicious
institutions first caused their aberrations — consigning them, without one tear of pity or one struggle of remorse, to
penury, infamy, and disease — condemns to bear the burden of its own atrocious absurdities! Thus, the youth of one sex
is consumed in slavery, disappointment, and spleen; that of the other, in frantic folly and selfish intemperance: till
at length, on the necks of a couple so enfeebled, so perverted, so distempered both in body and soul, society throws
the yoke of marriage: that yoke which, once rivetted on the necks of its victims, clings to them like the poisoned
garments of Nessus or Medea. What can be expected from these ill-assorted yoke-fellows, but that, like two ill-tempered
hounds, coupled by a tyrannical sportsman, they should drag on their indissoluble fetter, snarling and growling, and
pulling in different directions? What can be expected for their wretched offspring, but sickness and suffering,
premature decrepitude, and untimely death? In this, as in every other institution of civilised society, avarice,
luxury, and disease constitute the TRIANGULAR HARMONY of the life of man. Avarice
conducts him to the abyss of toil and crime: luxury seizes on his ill-gotten spoil; and, while he revels in her
enchantments, or groans beneath her tyranny, disease bursts upon him, and sweeps him from the earth.”

“Your theory,” said Mr Jenkison, “forms an admirable counterpoise to your example. As far as I am attracted by the
one, I am repelled by the other. Thus, the scales of my philosophical balance remain eternally equiponderant, and I see
no reason to say of either of them, ΟΙΧΕΤΑΙ ΕΙΣ ΑΙΔΑΟ1.”